Time Magazine Contents Page Vol.134, No. 22 NOVEMBER 27, 1989

Vol.134, No. 22 NOVEMBER 27, 1989

COVER: As the art market explodes, auction houses and dealers are the winners, museums and the public are the losers

Bids spiral to new records, and foreign investors scramble to buy, shifting old power bases. In a market it no longer controls, America sells more than it buys, the art world turns into the Art Industry, and liquidity is all. The result is that people are being deprived of access to their cultural heritage, and the richness of visual experience is collapsing under the brute weight of price.